


Own the Earth

by RavenclawGenius



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clarke is Anya's second, Clarke is a badass, Clarke is sent to Earth alone, F/F, Lexa and Clarke are perfect, Wanheda Clarke Griffin, at least for a while
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25322623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenclawGenius/pseuds/RavenclawGenius
Summary: Abby snaps a monitoring cuff on her wrist and tells Clarke that she is being sent to the Ground. Clarke gets a pass because she is Abby Griffin’s child - because Clarke grew up attending dinners and holidays with the Council and their children, and they trust that she can be responsible. They trust that she is sharp and capable, that if the ground is survivable, Clarke will find a way to survive it and relay the message back to them. Abby tells her that if she lives, if the Earth is habitable, the Ark will follow her down in three months’ time, and Clarke will be pardoned of her crimes.Only, things don't go as planned, and the Ark doesn't fall in three months. It's three years before Clarke sees her people again, and so much has changed that she isn't sure she can protect them - nor that they deserve her protection.
Relationships: Anya & Clarke Griffin, Clarke Griffin & Lincoln, Clarke Griffin & Raven Reyes, Clarke Griffin/Lexa, Lexa & Lincoln (The 100), Lexa & Raven Reyes, Octavia Blake & Clarke Griffin, Octavia Blake & Lexa
Comments: 37
Kudos: 330





	Own the Earth

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't been in this fandom for a very long time, but after recently rereading one of my favorite Clexa fix, this idea took hold and wouldn't let go. I had so many ideas and had to put them to paper, so here it is. Let me know if you're interested in more (not that it matters, really.... I'll post what I write regardless. :P)

Clarke is seventeen and terrified.

Most days, she tries not to think about it, but solitary lives up to its name; she’s alone in her cell in the skybox, with very few distractions, and _not_ thinking about it is practically an impossibility.

Clarke is seventeen -- still technically a child, even if the innocence and ignorance of childhood had long ago deserted her -- and she has no future.

There is nothing for Clarke beyond these four, artfully decorated walls and, in just over a month’s time, there will be nothing for her at all. She will float in the void of space just like her father before her, for committing the very same crime. A crime that Clarke still doesn’t view as such, because how can it be unlawful to do everything in her power to save her home and her people?

But the Ark is an unforgiving place for more reasons than one, and Clarke has stopped wondering about the ethics of her decision. She has accepted both her punishment and her fate.

It does not make her less afraid.

* * *

Clarke is dragged from the skybox too soon. They try to take her father’s watch and Clarke lashes out, shoves a guard into the wall. She panics and she fights, because acceptance or not, it is against human nature to walk willingly into death, and Clarke is not ready. She still has time, she still has four more weeks, and it is a cruelty to strip her of it.

Her mother finds her, tries to calm her and reassure her, but nothing she says can be trusted. Clarke knows more than her mother believes, she has heard the guards’ whispers, she knows Abby is the reason that Clarke’s father was floated, and knows, too, that whatever is happening right now is likely due to her mother’s manipulations.

Abby snaps a monitoring cuff on her wrist and tells Clarke that she is being sent to the Ground. There was talk of the other hundred delinquents joining her, Clarke listens vaguely, but the Council doesn’t trust them. Clarke gets a pass because she is Abby Griffin’s child - because Clarke grew up attending dinners and holidays with the Council and their children, and they trust that she can be responsible. They trust that she is sharp and capable, that if the ground is survivable, Clarke will find a way to survive it and relay the message back to them. Abby tells her that if she lives, if the Earth is habitable, the Ark will follow her down in three months’ time, and Clarke will be pardoned of her crimes.

Clarke is seventeen and feels the weight of the Ark’s survival on her shoulders.

* * *

Clarke lands and feels the sun on her face, the breeze in her hair, but she has no time to enjoy it. Her communication system is busted, the dropship she arrived in largely damaged upon impact, and the Council miscalculated her arrival point

They dropped her on the wrong damn mountain.

It’s twenty miles to Mount Weather, and Clarke is a quarter of the way there before she sees the first sign of life on this planet. It’s a deer, a peaceful and beautiful buck, but at a snap of a twig beneath Clarke’s feet, Clarke discovers that it is mutated. Two heads and a bloody mess at the seam between them.

It’s not promising.

There’s a river in her path that shouldn’t be there, and it isn’t deep, but Clarke doesn’t trust it. The water moves in a way that is wrong, there’s some kind of beast beneath the waves, so Clarke avoids it. Instead, she lays down in lush grass after a soft rain, and wakes in the night.

The forest glows, and it’s gorgeous, it’s perfect, it’s so much more than Clarke ever imagined. She wants to draw it, wants to capture it on paper, but there’s no time. Clarke needs to find a way to Mount Weather if she wants to survive, so she keeps moving along the bank of the river, eyes peeled for a safe way across.

Three miles down, there’s a bridge. It is not a natural bridge, and it is not from the time before the bombs. It is enough to inform Clarke that she is not alone. There’s some kind of intelligent life on this planet, someone _built_ this bridge, so Clarke stops worrying about radiation and starts to worry, instead, about trying to cover her tracks. She doesn’t know if the other life on this planet will help or harm her, and until she is more familiar with her surroundings, until she has eaten and recovered some of her strength, she isn’t interested in finding out.

Clarke is clumsy in her efforts, she knows -- everything about this place is new and unexpected to her, and it will take time for Clarke to learn beyond the knowledge she’d gathered in classes and from textbooks -- but Clarke does her best and keeps moving forward.

She rests again at sunset. She’s close, only a few more miles left to traverse, but Clarke isn’t stupid enough to think she can navigate in the dark, and she doesn’t trust what she cannot see.

She does not wake peacefully.

There is a low growl, and hot, sticky breath at her cheek. Her hands and feet, she discovers quickly, are tightly bound together. The _thing_ that lugs her carelessly over its shoulder is human, but not. It has dark skin, dark eyes, a snarl at its lip. It crouches unnaturally and it does not communicate with Clarke’s screams and pleas, so Clarke stops trying. The thing is feral, and Clarke’s attempts to find mercy or understanding fall on deaf ears.

Ironically enough, the thing takes Clarke exactly where she meant to go. It takes her to Mount Weather, but it is not the safe haven Clarke had hoped it would be.

There are people here -- _non-_ feral people, people in cages, like the one they put Clarke in. They look weak, sick, they are in obvious pain, but if they speak, they do not speak to Clarke. They watch her just as she watches them, curious and wary of each other, though with much greater concerns to worry over.

Clarke’s body is sore and bruised, weak from hunger, but her mind is strong and races endlessly. She rubs at her newly released wrists and tries to organize her thoughts.

Who are these people? What is harming them? Did they get here by the same means as Clarke? Who took Clarke, anyway? How did that humanoid creature become that way? How will Clarke escape? How will she escape with all of these other people? She can’t stay here, and she can’t leave human lives to suffer if she can help. There must be a way, there must be something she can do. There is _always_ a way. Clarke just has to find it.

There are footsteps and chatter and _English._ There are people who speak, people Clarke can communicate with, and they might be her captors, but Clarke needs answers and she doesn’t care if they come from friend or foe.

They wonder why Clarke is different from the others. They spy her father’s watch and the cuff at her wrist, recognize it for the technology that it is. Clarke takes a look at her fellow prisoners, spies clothing much different than hers but no hint of technology on their persons. It shocks her captors and they ask questions, but Clarke withholds answers.

“Who are you?” One asks. A man, brown hair, blue eyes, average height -- but there is a rifle in his hand and he bangs it threateningly at the bars of Clarke’s cage.

Clarke narrows her eyes and raises her chin in defiance. All the time Clarke has is borrowed, she has already lived longer than she expected, and while she fears the bullets in his weapon, she will not show it. She can’t afford another weakness.

“Who are you? What the hell am I doing here?” Clarke demands.

“You’re not like them,” the man says, refusing to answer Clarke. “What’s that on your wrist?”

“Tell you what,” Clarke huffs in frustration, working her options. “You take me to whoever is in charge of this _prison_ , and I’ll tell you what this is,” she says, raising her arm with a lifted brow and a smirk at her lips.

The man rattles his gun against the bars of her cage once more with a snarl. A woman in a lab coat eyes Clarke curiously, snatches at Clarke’s wrist and pulls her arm through the bars, despite how viciously Clarke fights against her grip. She relents when the man raises his weapon to Clarke’s forehead with a malicious grin, but all the woman does is insert a needle at Clarke’s forearm. She sets up a tube and draws Clarke’s blood, and Clarke narrows her eyes in suspicion.

“Why do you want my blood?” She asks, frowning. “What are you testing it for?” She wants to know.

The two depart in silence from the same direction they came, and Clarke watches them go. She’s confused, she doesn’t know where she is and her heart is racing. Clarke’s been in captivity before, the skybox was her home for nearly a year, but the prisoners around her are hurt and injured, clearly different from those who have caged them, and Clarke is afraid of what is being done to them, and why.

“You are foolish if you believe they will negotiate,” Clarke hears, and she whips around, startled.

There is a woman, slumped over her knees and crouched in the corner of her cage. Her skin is dark, and so is her hair -- at least until the ends fade into blonde -- but her eyes are darker than both. Unreadable, but focused intently on Clarke.

“Well, I’d be stupid not to try,” Clarke argues carefully. “They want something from me, and I want answers.”

“The Mountain Men are not kind,” the woman snarls. “They are not your friends.”

“I don’t have friends,” Clarke replies blankly. “Not anymore. And I’m not looking for any. Particularly not the kind who are capable of… _this,”_ Clarke looks around with a curled lip full of disgust.

“You are likely safer in here than you would be outside, Sky Girl,” the woman snorts and closes her eyes.

Clarke becomes alert at that, her full attention on the woman before her, but she says nothing. She can’t ask how the woman knows that Clarke is from the sky without confirming it, but someone out there has clearly taken note of her arrival to the Ground, and Clarke feels more and more certain that it is not a good thing.

Time passes. The watch Clarke carries with her tells her it has been a few hours, but then it happens.

An older man in white wanders into the tunnel, eyes on Clarke and Clarke alone. He introduces himself as the President of Mount Weather. He tells Clarke that his name is Dante, Dante Wallace, and Clarke doesn’t trust the smile at his mouth or his soft-spoken words.

Still, he takes a key and releases Clarke from her cage, carefully helping her down. She watches him cautiously and follows where he leads her, eyes rapidly taking everything in, trying to memorize the layout. She was in the tunnels of the facility before, but now she isn’t. The dark and damp surroundings rapidly alter, shifting to white walls and metal, more like the Ark than Clarke is comfortable with.

He takes Clarke to his office, has a meal brought for her, which he first tastes to prove it is not poison. Clarke is still wary, still uncertain, but she’s not about to reject food when she doesn’t know when her next meal will come. She eats swiftly and in abundance, hopeful the Ark can read from her vitals that she has found sustenance.

“Now,” Wallace steeples his fingers together gently, “let’s talk.”

Clarke narrows her eyes.

“Why am I here?” She demands again. “Those people downstairs -- what are you doing to them?”

Dante tilts his head in consideration. “You don’t need to be concerned with them,” he dismisses idly, and something in Clarke’s chest expands in a red rage of fury, an anger that she doesn’t fully understand. “They are savages. Not like you. Tell me, what’s your name?”

Clarke knows she will have to give a little to get a little, and comparatively, her name is nothing. Not really. It has no meaning to him, anyway, so Clarke sacrifices it.

“Clarke. My name is Clarke,” she tells him. “Why am I _here?_ ” She insists.

Dante shrugs with an unsettling smile. “Happy accident,” he explains. “We weren’t looking for you.”

“Why do I get the feeling that doesn’t mean you’re going to let me go?” Clarke asks distrustfully, eyeing him over her empty plate.

“Why would you want us to?” He queries confusedly. “We can feed you, offer you shelter, medicine, _life_. You’re different from the rest, you aren’t from here. Where _are_ you from?” He tries in a way that Clarke thinks is meant to be subtle, but isn’t.

“Why do you care?” Clarke snaps, sure that this is information she shouldn’t offer.

“Because we found you on the _Ground,_ ” he says reverently, leaning forward in eager curiosity. “You didn’t survive the bombs like the others, but you obviously didn’t survive as we did. You can touch the _Ground,_ ” Wallace repeats, and Clarke begins to understand.

She looks around and sees no windows, there had been no exit signs on their walk from the tunnels to his office. The Ark hadn’t had them either, because there’s nowhere to go, no exit to be found. These people can’t withstand the radiation outside as Clarke can, as the so-called savages below. Their dream is the same as Clarke’s was, the same as her people.

They don’t want Clarke, they want the knowledge her body can offer. They want the _Ground,_ they want the sun on their faces and the breeze in their hair.

Clarke sympathizes, but only for a moment before her mind begins to reel all over again. If her body holds the secret, she definitely isn’t safe here, and judging by the conditions of the people imprisoned beneath them, her captors are not above using force to get what they want.

“What do you want from me?” Clarke frowns. “In exchange for the _life_ you mean to offer,” she adds bitterly.

“For now? Some tests,” he shrugs easily. “Some bloodwork, and a little observation.”

Clarke isn’t stupid. She knows that this will not stop there, knows that he means to make her a guinea pig, an experiment, and that they’ll bleed her dry to get to the Ground if they have to. She could comply, at least for now, until she can come up with a plan. It’s probably what she _should_ do, but Clarke is stubborn, refuses the concept, thinks it is a crime against humanity to use other people this way and knows how quickly it could escalate. She feels safer in that cage in the tunnels than she does around the people above them.

At least there she knows which direction to look for the threat. Here, everything is a threat, she feels like she can’t breathe.

Besides, freely offering information about her people could endanger them all when they finally arrive to Earth, and Clarke isn’t about to risk them without a damn good reason. This isn’t one.

“And if I say no?” She growls out threateningly, though she knows that she is absolutely no threat to these people, with their guns and cages.

Dante sighs. “I didn’t want that to be the case, but if that’s your choice, then we’ll return you to the cage and take what we want, regardless.”

Clarke nods. It’s what she expects.

It’s also what she _wants._

There’s much less supervision in the tunnels, and even if she is caged, less supervision means more freedom. Roaming the halls upstairs, presumably amongst the other people of the Mountain, means that eyes will be on her at all times, and Clarke doesn’t want that.

No, Clarke needs time, she needs to think, she needs to _stall._

And she needs to talk to the woman downstairs, the one who speaks English, too, the one who warned her against befriending the Mountain Men.

Alone, Clarke is not a threat. Together, it is possible they could become one.

“Fine. Take me back,” Clarke says with the false-stubbornness of a child in her tone, but with the wit and foresight of a leader.

A leader Clarke doesn’t know she is destined to become.


End file.
